Hyderabad: The Osmania University College of Engineering was established in 1929 but nearly nine decades later its annual undergrad intake still remains at 320. JNTU-Hyderabad was started in 1965 as an engineering college. After half a century, its undergrad intake is just 360. These are two colleges that any student would aspire to study in. In contrast, in just five years, several private engineering colleges are accommodating 1,000 students. So much so, the quantum of seats in government engineering colleges is just about 2.5 per cent of all the seats in the state. For this academic year, the state has a total of 1.19 lakh seats in engineering colleges, but only 3,041 are in government colleges.

While government institutions have failed in terms of school education, the reverse is true in case of higher education. Government apathy is to be blamed, since these colleges have the potential to expand without compromising on quality. “To start a new branch or increase intake, the main hurdle is that we have to get permission for faculty from the government. That is a long process and takes a lot of time and the government is not very encouraging. Land and equipment is not a problem at all,” said a senior academic from Osmania University said. Academics lament that the government is not taking the initiative to fill up even existing posts, let alone sanction additional faculty to scale up the intake.

For instance, the Osmania University College of Engineering nearly 50 faculty positions are vacant. Asked about this, OUCE Principal Prof. S. Ramachandram said, “We take academic consultants to fill in this gap. But this time, we are planning to write to the government for permission to increase our intake.” Academics say deny that increasing the intake could lead to a deterioration in standards. “We don’t need to increase intake to 10,000. The intake can be increased as per the existing potential. In universities, there is a lot of potential that is not tapped because of government ignorance,” a senior faculty member of the JNTU-H said.